LR2 performance question...

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theMusicMan

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Hi All

For some reason, my version of LR2 seems to be on a go-slow...! I regularly see the beach balloon when switching from another application back to Lightroom, and it can often take many seconds for the application to become responsive. It is getting a little frustrating to be honest.

So, I am wondering is there a maximum or optimum limit one can reach of number of photos in a catalogue...? Mine is currently at 28,''' or so shots in the catalogue and I am wondering if it is this that might be slowing things down.

Should I archive this catalogue and start a fresh one...? or should this not be an issue...?

All advice greatly appreciated. Thanks.

John
 
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Hi John, i don't have as many images as you but I would guess that 28''' in a single catalogue is quite a few. The max number in a single catalogue would be dependent partly on the performance of the machine it was running on. I would suggest you could split your catalogue out into multiple catalogues based upon on your own catagories. Some people have a working catalogue with only the last few months images in that they use for development etc... and a then an archive catalogue where performance isn't so critical.

Multiple catalogues is certainly a sensible way to go in a LR workflow with many thousands of images.
 
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Many thanks Nik, I shall have a go at rearranging my catalogue into separate ones over the weekend. Appreciate the advice, thanks.
 
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I'm sure you will get some advice from others here with many 1''''s of images as to what a sensible size for your catalogues should be. If your running it on Macbook then there will be limitations to CPU/ RAM resources so smaller catalogues would make sense. I'm sure some are running larger catalogues but probably on more substantial hardware. Don't forget you can also 'Optimize' your catalogue in the catalogue settings menu.
 
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I'm guessing the 2gb of RAM is probably the bottleneck, particularly as you mention other programs running at the same time. Keep an eye on Activity Monitor and you can watch that one.

As far as splitting your catalog, it's not an ideal case scenario, but it may help a bit. I'd go with the suggestion of a working catalog and an archive master catalog though, rather than trying to split by topic or anything like that.
 
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Can I butt in here with a catalogue question, please? Last year I used just one catalgoue for all my commissioned work, and was easly able then to create collections of the best images, useful whenever anyone wanted images for an advert or an article. But the concensus seemed to be that one catalogue per job was a better system, so I've adopted that for this years work .... but answers to various cataloging questions recently don't seem to suggest that the one larger catalogue is such a bad idea after all - thoughts??
 
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Good question Jerry, one I am also interested in finding out peoples opinion on.
 
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There are a lot of complicating factors when using multiple catalogs especially if image files are in more than one that I wouldn't recommend it unless you really want to.
Try searching for that one file from 2''8 that had the parrot in it.......mmm, which shoot was that on????:lol::lol:
There is a case for a working catalog and an archive catalog to keep a working catalog small and fast and then importing the working catalog into the archive one before emptying the working cat.
 
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Jerry, if pressed, I'd have to say that the consensus is more towards your previous system. Try to stay with one catalog, period. Only move to multiple catalogs after very careful consideration and testing of performance gains versus the DAM efficiency loss.
 
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I'm quite surprised about the 'single catalogue view' here as Adobe gives you all the tools to manage multiple catalogues. The training video's I watch also suggest a multiple catalogue work flow to separate jobs or work categories. I don't have enough images (yet) to warrant multiple catalogues so can't comment on why it may be such a bad idea.
 
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Thanks Brad that's interessting as it seems to have moved during the lkast couple of years or so ... much previous advice was to have individual catalogues for each job(by the way, most of my work is weddings and portrait sessions; searchabiolity across the whole range isn't a top priority but occassionally useful, especially establishing an ongoing "Best of the year" collection - my personal work is definitely staying in one catalogue as that does need to be searchable across the whole range ... really must get down to the keywording though ...)

Hi Nik ... are those training videos available on line? Can you point me in the direction?

Jerry
 
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When you've got a clearly defined line, separate catalogs are ok. If there's a distinction between them like work vs. home, where there will never be any overlap, it works great. The problems come when an image could be in multiple different places, and you have to go hunting - or it ends up in multiple different catalogs which is even more confusing. Same comes when you're keywording - spelling mistakes creep in, different capitalization, and so forth.
 
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So, Modern Brides just called, they want to see all of your 'Cake Ceremony' pictures.

Food for thought. (hehe, get it?)

Seriously, there are countless similar examples, across catalogs that may become important only after some time has passed. How important? You know best in your own particular practice. But this represents the canonical argument against multi-catalogs.
 
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sizzlingbadger;459'1 said:
I'm quite surprised about the 'single catalogue view' here as Adobe gives you all the tools to manage multiple catalogues. The training video's I watch also suggest a multiple catalogue work flow to separate jobs or work categories. I don't have enough images (yet) to warrant multiple catalogues so can't comment on why it may be such a bad idea.
Click to expand...

Adobe does give you tools to manage multiple catalogs. I disagree that “Adobe gives you all the tools”. Clearly, there are things you might want to do when you have multiple catalogs that simply aren’t possible in Lightroom as it exists today (e.g. search across two or more catalogs).

Multiple catalog work flows are fine in certain situations, you simply need to put some thought into whether or not this is the best way for you. As many of us are not professional photographers, and we don’t have “jobs”, the idea of catalogs for each job (or work category) clearly doesn’t apply. Speaking as a non-professional photographer, I am very happy with a single catalog, and I shall probably stay with one catalog, as I see no reason to change. Further, one of the most often heard reasons for splitting catalogs (size of the catalog, or speed of the software dealing with such a large catalog) seems to be a fear that may not be supported by facts, as someone recently reported a Lightroom catalog of over 1'',''' photos that works efficiently.

As I said, your needs may differ. If so, choose what is best for you.
 
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Yes searching across multiple catalogues could be an issue, I can see that could be a problem for many. I would prefer a single catalogue for simplicity sake personally.

The performance argument would certainly come up at some point I expect, 1'',''' images is quite a lot but I doubt its not as many as some professionals have to deal with. The hardware will determine the outcome of that I suppose.

Jerry, the training is at Lynda.com
 
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